Grim progress as L’Isle-Verte tries to get back to normal

Mayor Ursule Theriault, left, greets students of the École Moisson-d’arts in L’Isle-Verte, Monday January 27, 2014, the first day the school opened since the deadly fire that destroyed the Résidence du Havre seniors’ home last Thursday.Phil Carpenter
/ The Gazette

A student hugs a teddy bear as she leaves of the École Moisson-d’arts in L’Isle-Verte, Monday January 27, 2014, the first day the school opened since the desdly fire that destroyed the Résidence du Havre seniors’ home last Thursday. The Sûreté du Québec handed out teddy bears to the kids and had one of their mascots gret the children as they left the school.Phil Carpenter
/ The Gazette

L’ISLE-VERTE — The pharmacy has moved into what used to be the seniors’ dance hall.

The CLSC, destroyed along with everything else in the Résidence du Havre, is up and running in the Church presbytery.

And the kids are back at school for the first time since fire raged through the seniors’ residence on Thursday, which sent helicopters hovering overhead and claimed some of their great-grandparents’ lives.

On Monday, the provincial police’s giant teddy-bear mascot “Polix” was at the school to greet them.

“The town is getting back to normal,” said Mayor Ursule Thériault, who cut her vacation in Florida short to manage the crisis in her town of 1,400. “The kids being back at school is a good example. It’s still difficult, but the people are doing well and they are strong.”

On the other side of the chain-link fence, however, there was nothing normal about the charred and frozen landscape surrounding a gaping hole that remained where the Résidence du Havre, housing 52 seniors, once stood — and where grim progress was being made.

Another four bodies were found on Monday, bringing the death toll to 14, with 18 people still considered missing.

Only three of the deceased have been identified:

Marie-Lauréat Dubé, 82

Louis-Philippe Roy, 89

Juliette Saindon, 95

Sûreté du Québec spokesperson Michel Brunet said crews have extended tarps over the site and are using special machinery that blows air heated to 300 degrees to thaw the ice that has encased the victims until now.

The equipment, on loan from the Saguenay where it is used to thaw the ice built up around a ship’s mast, has so far allowed recovery workers to clear about 40 per cent of the foundation of the burnt-out residence, despite the frigid temperatures and occasionally blowing snow, Brunet said.

But the operation is not just about recovering bodies, Brunet added, so it will take time.

“You have to remember — this is an investigation, and we have to recover not just the remains but the evidence, and determine first where the fire started, and then how.”

Was it defective wiring? A criminal act? A space heater in one of the rooms? A cigarette?

“We have to look into each of those possibilities,” Brunet said, adding it could take days or weeks or even months to pinpoint the exact cause. “We can’t go with rumours. We have to go with facts.”

There are now firefighters and technicians, police officers, crime scene investigators, pathologists, and coroners all working on the site, Brunet said.

Police have interviewed about 100 witnesses, and again on Monday new witnesses came forward with new information, Brunet said, urging people to call 1-800-659-4264 if they have anything to add.

In the meantime, the SQ has assigned an investigator to each of the remaining families still waiting to hear about their loved ones. “As soon as we recover the bodies, the families are advised.”

Health Minister Réjean Hébert, who spent part of the day in L’Isle-Verte Monday, said teams of psychologists, social workers and firemen have also been deployed to offer help to survivors and the victims’ families.

He said he’s met with 10 of the survivors still in hospital or placed in other homes, and heard their harrowing stories of being helped out of the burning building by other residents, or trying to escape from their own balconies by tying sheets together, only to have the sheets tear halfway down.

But he is also concerned for the police and firefighters who rushed in to help Thursday morning and have been working tirelessly ever since.

“Theirs is a tough job,” Hébert said. “You are looking for people who were in the fire that you knew personally … We have to intervene early to prevent them from having psychological distress in the future,” said Hébert.

Counselling is also being provided to all of the schoolchildren affected by the disaster, including two 7-year-olds who were evacuated in the middle of the night when fire engulfed the residence next door.

“For the children, it’s their great-grandparents who might have been affected, but their parents might be really suffering,” said Sharon Woodman, who lives on a farm in nearby St-François and teaches English at École Moisson-d’Arts. Students at the school used to visit with the seniors at Résidence du Havre for the Christmas show and other events.

“We’re just trying to get back to normal and for sure, we’ll help each child in whatever way we can.”

Across the way at the makeshift pharmacy, now housed in a building normally reserved for dances and other golden-age events, pharmacists have restocked the shelves of medicine and doubled deliveries.

The pharmacy was able to recover all the files from residents of the du Havre home because they are all digital now, said manager Karine Beaulieu.

“It’s a huge labour of love,” said Beaulieu. “Catherine (the pharmacist) knew all their files by heart, and for Denise (the assistant manager) she’s lost her “grannies and granddads” … We can restock the shelves, but we can’t replace the people.”

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